The Day I Swapped My Dad For 2 Goldfish: The Ark, Dublin. Neil Gaiman's story is so elastic there's room to push out the boundaries and create a magical theatrical experience for children.
That's just what director Eric Fraad has done at the Ark, where the five- to 10-year-olds in the audience were by turns mesmerised and tickled by the ever-changing antics of the actors and the sheer fun on stage.
The story is told by Mathew Dunphy, playing a young boy who's fond of tricks, and Orla Fitzgerald, playing his little sister, who's equally fond of teasing him. The play starts with the two skating and generally messing around while Dad hides, as usual, behind his newspaper. Enter their friend Nathan, with two goldfish in a bowl, and a swap of fish for Dad is eventually agreed upon. Mum's not pleased when she returns, and the children have to go and retrieve Dad. But Nathan has swapped him on, and there follows a chain of swaps that brings a sassy girl band on stage, followed by a snooty posh boy with his butler and a hilariously eccentric family.
Jocelyn Clarke, who adapted the story, has turned it into lively theatre. It's very much a multimedia show, so there's something going on on all parts of the stage at all times. David McKean's quirky and dark illustrations are projected on a wall, giving an ever-changing backdrop, while a video screen shows the tired children pounding the streets, so bringing an element of reality to the imaginary world on stage. The superb original music is by Max Tundra.
The cast of seven is made up of experienced, mostly young actors, and when they took their bow my co-critic, six-year-old Harry, couldn't believe that's all there was and wanted to know where the rest of the people were. Niamh Linehan, Simon Jewell, Emma Moohan, Steve Blount and Ailish Symons all played several characters with expert comic timing, characterisation and conviction. The children loved the live rabbit on stage. Bruno Schwengl's set design is as flexible as it has to be, and actors use it with great energy.
There's usually a simple moral to children's books, and here it's that no matter what mistakes you make, they can be put right, although there might be obstacles and it might take some time.
By Bernice Harrison
Runs until April 17th
The Respectful Prostitute & Decadence
New Theatre, Dublin
In theory, it's a good idea: two theatre companies join forces to present two works in an evening. In practice, it's something else entirely. In the case of Break On Through Productions' presentation of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Respectful Prostitute and Spike Productions' Decadence, by Steven Berkoff, the problems are due to wildly varying levels of competence and execution and to the combined length of the two pieces.
In Berkoff's wonderfully biting vilification of 1980s London, director Alan Kinsella and actors Katherine Murphy and Tom O'Leary unite to craft a visually invigorating and physically demanding tour de force. Berkoff's text asks that the two actors play two couples, one a pair of poncey toffs, the other rough-and- ready East End of London types. Without a break, Murphy and O'Leary switch from role to role, often following extremely demanding monologues. The actors are perfectly matched in prowess, and it's not their fault that the text goes nowhere decisive, that key moments descend into repetition of theme and that the binary opposition of the two couples of different class becomes a one-note symphony.
Kinsella wrests an extraordinary amount of action and variety out of two people and a couch; the shame of it is that, at 90 minutes, it's difficult for the audience to keep up, especially as they have just seen a lifeless and lacklustre production of Sartre's discourse on race relations in the American South of the 1950s. Directed by Simon Hubbard, the production achieves few moments of resonance; the approximations of the southern accent are shaky at best, and the lack of creativity as regards blocking and inhabitation of role makes for static stage pictures. Its tale of racism and sexism is certainly pertinent enough, but poor execution prevents any real power.
By Susan Conley
Runs until Saturday
Now Wash Your Hands
Project, Dublin
Splitting 5 - Maierhof. #220303 - Saunders. Peter And Mr Wolf - Wolman. For A Moment, Windows - Wolman. Now Wash Your Hands - Walshe
Now Wash Your Hands is the title of a new work commissioned by Project arts centre from Chicago-based Dubliner Jennifer Walshe. It's also the title of the concert the composer planned around its premiere, at Project.
Walshe is interested in sounds that are normally considered "flawed or redundant". She exploits the grinding sound of a cello bow drawn agonisingly slowly across the string. She creates a miniature bellows by blowing into and sucking from a paper bag. She uses a range of vocal sounds that speak of privacy and intimacy, of revelations that people don't usually want to make. She's interested in the emotional and social connotations but deliberately presents the sounds in a decontextualised way - a decontextualisation that extended here to leaving out information about the evening's other performers, even down to their names.
When she's on stage herself, as she was in Now Wash Your Hands, Walshe usually manages to hold the disparate elements of her work together in a theatrically persuasive way. The new piece, however, for voice, cello and two DJs, is hit and miss, striking with pointed resonance at moments, seeming a dull, abstract exercise at others.
The piece wasn't helped by being placed last in a programme dominated by the experimental - and in which the act of experimentation seemed more important than the quality of the results.
It was easy to see how the use of instruments in pieces by Michael Maierhof, James Saunders and Peter Edwards related to Walshe's preoccupations. But most of the work - slow moving, laboured and extremely limited in musical incident - was of the sort to try any listener's patience.
The major contributor of contrast was Amnon Wolman's video-accompanied Peter And Mr Wolf, an updated gay reworking of elements from Peter And The Wolf. It may not have added up to much, but this piece by someone who has described himself as "this strange combination of a politically minded, conceptual, somewhat minimal romantic composer" at least held one's attention.
By Michael Dervan
Trio Töykeät
John Field Room, Dublin
Trio Töykeät's concert in the John Field Room was the third in the ambitious series organised by the Improvised Music Company and Jazz Architects to illustrate the diversity of expression in the jazz piano trio. In terms of audience response it was another success, and to a degree it offered enjoyable music, but where substance is concerned, well, that's a different story.
It's not that the musicians were in any sense poor. Iiro Rantala is a pianist blessed with abundant technique, Eerik Siikasaari a very competent bassist and Rami Eskelinen a highly capable drummer. Together, as could be expected of an experienced, working group, they formed a close-knit trio, going through their repertoire - almost exclusively originals by the pianist or the drummer - with impressively impeccable ease, regardless of the changes of direction built in to even the most uptempo performance. And Rantala's engaging personality and droll, self- deprecating humour were among the more enjoyable aspects of the concert. He is a funny man, and some of his - and his colleagues' - wit and sense of fun was reflected in the music. Their homage to the late Danish humourist and musician Victor Borge is a case in point.
Rantala's exuberantly voluble piano remains the dominant force in the group, however, frequently setting a ferocious pace for the others; the opening Dedication and Karate from the first set, and Happy Hour from the second, were typically take-no-prisoners efforts, adeptly and smoothly handled by the trio. And the pianist's brilliant exposition of Bud Powell's Celia and Reflections was a demonstration of solo piano technique of the highestorder. And there's the rub.
Whether solo or as a trio, this was a well-oiled machine going through its paces; showtime with some attractive bells and whistles. Ultimately, though, it was surface shine and little depth. It's one way for the jazz trio to go, but by the time the closing Etude, a witty Mozartian send-up, had underlined the punchline too often, enough was enough.
By Ray Comiskey
